Bears fascinate me. They always have. And while I’m usually a very lucky hunter, when it comes to hunting bears I’ve had just about everything the can go wrong go wrong at one point or another. I’ve hunted bears by spotting and stalking them in Montana and on Prince of Wales Island numerous times. I’ve also hunted them over bait in Minnesota and Canada. But what I had never tried was hunting them with hounds. So this past winter, while suffering from an extreme case of cabin fever, I contacted Mike Richie of Richie Outfitters in Salmon Idaho. Mike outfits in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness Area and is a dedicated houndsman. After talking him a couple of times, I sent in my deposit for a May hunt.

While I had never hunted the Selway before, I have hunted the Bob Marshall several times. I figured that one wouldn’t be too much different than the other and that they’d both offer the same sort of challenges – steep ridges choked with blow-downs and brush. For a flatlander like me, getting in shape was going to be really important. Chasing hounds is very strenuous and I wanted to be able to enjoy my upcoming hunt, not have a heart attack on the side of a mountain!

The other thing that I decided was that I wanted to do the hunt with an open-sighted handgun. Since the shooting should be fairly short range, the portability of a handgun sounded very appealing. I had killed a couple of bears and a deer with my S&W 629 over the years, but had sold it a couple of years ago because I never used it anymore. Time to buy a new toy…

Since I hadn’t really been paying too much attention to the current trends in handgun hunting, I started doing some research. I had just about decided on trying to find a first generation TC Contender in either 30-30 or 7-30 Waters when I discovered John Linebaugh’s website and read what he had to say about Ruger single-action revolvers, the .45 Colt, and hard-cast lead bullets. Everything he had to say made a lot of sense to me, so I now had another option I was interested in – the Ruger Bisley Blackhawk.

I walked into GunStop, bypassed the reloading supplies (where I usually spend most of my time) and went straight to the gun counter. They had one Contender with a .221 Fireball barrel, but that was it. Moving to the next case, something caught my eye. On the bottom shelf was a slightly used Ruger Bisley .45 Colt with a 5.5 inch barrel. The price was about $200 less than what I was expecting to pay, so within a half an hour I was on my way with a new gun and the dies, brass, powder and bullets to go with it.

To get a feel for the gun, the first loads I started with were standard .45 Colt loads, not the heavy ones recommended for hunting. 7.5 grains of Unique and a 200 grain cast bullet proved to be a very cheap, accurate and comfortable load to practice with. After getting comfortable with it, I decided to make a few changes to see if I couldn’t improve both the performance and looks of the revolver. I made the following modifications:

- Replaced the factory grips with elk antler grips from Patrick Grashorn.
- Replaced the stock base pin with a Belt Mountain #5 base pin.
- Had the cylinder throats reamed to a consistent .4525 inches by Cylindersmith.com.
- Replaced the rear sight blade with a One Ragged Hole aperture sight.

With these changes made, I was ready to start working on full power loads. I order two different cast bullets from Beartooth Bullets, a 260 grain WFN (wide flat nosed) and a 300 grain LFN (long flat nosed). Both of these bullets were based on LBT mould designs and cast to a hardness of approximately 21 BHN. Using full charges of H110, I was able to get velocities up to 1450 fps with the 260 grain bullet and 1333 fps with the 300 grain bullet along with more than sufficient accuracy for shooting bears at 30 yards. Many experienced handgun hunters believe that cast bullets perform the best, and by perform the best I mean create the largest permanent wound channel, when their impact velocity is between 1000 and 1200 fps. That being the case, I settled on a load of 22 grains of H110 and the 300 grain LFN for my hunting load. This load was accurate, easy to control, and gave me approximately 1150 fps.

With everything working well I started practicing in earnest. In late March I noticed that the cylinder seemed to have quite a bit of end-play. Using a feeler gauge, I checked and realized that the end-play was much more than I had realized. I called Ruger and they sent me a prepaid UPS label to return it for repair. The repairs took a few weeks, and when I received it back, I found that they had not only corrected the end-play and tightened the cylinder gap, but had also replaced the barrel and rear sight. All of this for free. Ruger really does have excellent customer service!

To get in shape for the trip, I loaded up a small pack with about 40 pounds of cast bullets and canned goods and carried it with me on five mile loop around my house 3-4 times a week. Unfortunately, a new pair boots I was asked to test inflamed some nerves in my left ankle, causing me to have to take a break for a few weeks in April. With only couple of weeks to go before leaving, I switched to running to try and boost my cardio strength.

Tags: Bear Hunting, Bisley, Hounds, Ruger, Selway